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Rep. Christopher (Chris) Van Hollen, Jr. [D-MD8]
U.S. Representative, Maryland’s 8th District

Photo of Van Hollen
State:Maryland [map]
District:8th Congressional District [map]
Party:Democrat
Birthday:Jan 10, 1959 / 50 years old

To contact Christopher Van Hollen, visit his official website. (Read our tips for communicating with Congress.) See the Project Vote Smart page for Van Hollen for more biographical and issue information.

Congressional Service

Christopher Van Hollen has represented Maryland’s 8th congressional district since 2003.

Below are the past and present terms in the Senate, House, and White House held by Christopher Van Hollen:

WhenRoleRepresenting
2003-2010
U.S. RepresentativeMaryland’s 8th
(was preceeded by Constance Morella)

Sponsorship Analysis

"Ideometer"Van Hollen is a far-left Democrat according to GovTrack's own analysis of bill sponsorship.

These labels come from the Political Spectrum statistical analysis that we have carried out. The statistical analysis puts members of Congress on a scale based on patterns of bill sponsorship, and is blind to party affiliation and the content of bills. From there, we have somewhat arbitrarily divided the Members of Congress into far-left/right, rank-and-file, and moderate (i.e. centrist). For each party, the most extreme 23% of Members of Congress are labeled far-left or -right. The most centrist 30% (i.e. those closest to the other party) are labeled moderate. The remaining 47% are labeled as rank-and-file.

"Leader-Follower Score"
Van Hollen is a leader according to our statistical analysis of bills in this legislative session. Other Members of Congress tend to cosponsor Van Hollen’s bills. For more, see congressional statistics.

To compute the leader-follower score for Van Hollen, we make a table that lists all other Members of Congress. Each row has the number bills sponsored by Van Hollen and cosponsored by the other Member of Congress divided by the number of bills sponsored by the other Member of Congress and cosponsored by Van Hollen.

This is a measure of who is following who. The higher the number, the more times others are cosponsoring Van Hollen's bills without Van Hollen returning the favor. We then take the mean of (the logorithms of) these ratios. Thanks to Joe Barillari for the idea.

Voting Record

Voting RecordChristopher Van Hollen missed 55 (1%) of 5206 votes since Jan 7, 2003. The graph to the left shows the number of missed votes over time. Click for a larger chart and a list of recent votes.

Committee Membership

Christopher Van Hollen sits on the following committees:

Bill Sponsorship & Cosponsorship

Christopher Van Hollen has sponsored 55 bills since Jan 7, 2003 of which 51 haven't made it out of committee and 3 were successfully enacted. Van Hollen has co-sponsored 1551 bills during the same time period. (The count of enacted bills considers only bills actually sponsored by Van Hollen and companion bills identified by CRS that were themselves enacted, but not if they were incorporated into other bills, as that information is not readily available.)

Some of Van Hollen’s most recently sponsored bills include...

H.R. 3578: Everyone Deserves Unconditional Access to Education (EDUCATE) Act
H.Con.Res. 178: Expressing the sense of Congress that we reaffirm the historic ties between the United States and the Netherlands by recognizing the Quadricentennial celebration of the discovery of the Hudson River and honoring the enduring values of the settlers of New Netherland that continue to permeate American society.
H.R. 3985: Second Generation Biofuel Producer Tax Credit Act of 2009
H.R. 2293: To amend the Trade Act of 1974 to require a Public Health Advisory Committee on Trade to be included in the trade advisory committee system, to require public health organizations to be included on the Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations and other relevant sectoral or functional advisory committees, and for other purposes.
H.R. 1362: National MS and Parkinson's Disease Registries Act

View All... (including bills from previous years)

Photo from the Congressional Pictorial Directory.